lele100

I am looking up sky miles needed for miami to rome and it shows 369,000 miles for economy for next august 2024 that’s crazy I have been looking the last few weeks and I could get it for around 70,000-90,000 any idea why so high? Is something up with their website?

Jaimito Cartero

Unfortunately, that is not uncommon with Skymiles these days.

Make sure you are looking 90 days in advance, and round trip. There is usually an option to look at a calendar month for best pricing. If you have a DL credit card, they may give you a discount on redemptions.

emma dog

The days where the early bird gets lowest fare are gone. The pricing is dynamic and starts off high and then will drop 3-6 months out depending on inventory. Then it will start to climb again around 45-90 days out.

shoodawg

what was the cash price offer?

xliioper

NAS is only 184 miles away from Miami. Start from there instead -- 35K (29.7K with Amex 15% discount) miles each way. You'll want to book as a roundtrip to avoid carrier surcharges on return ticket.

Duke787

The absurdity of DL SkyMiles redemptions these days.

Yes there is the NAS option above but it’s absurd that the alternative is paying 10x the amount to fly out of MIA in Y.

What is the cash rate and do you have a Delta AMEX? If so, PWM could be an alternative.

xliioper

Yes, cash fares (w/PWM) is definitely going to be a better choice here by quite a bit if you don't want to reposition. BE/Main fares out of MIA start at $1296/$1466 roundtrip for mid-week departures. FLL is $135 cheaper at $1161/$1331 roundtrip (below). Too soon to be booking into August as booking window has just opened and they haven't really released any bucket inventory in lower fare classes yet. AA has BE/Main cash fares from $871/$1041 roundtrip out of both MIA and FLL.

Repooc17

Is OP comfortable with positioning flights? Flying AA would be a better idea, as DL nonstop between MIA and NAS is really expensive

OP needs to factor the additional cost into the equation, along with risk tolerance (getting there the night before would mean hotel costs; getting there the same day, if possible, would run into potential risk of no-show - this is especially problematic involving international flights repositioning).

I would do it to save a boat load of miles, but I am not sure of OP's risk tolerance.

All those miles you have accumulated, you thought you could get a free flight...ha...this is how airlines make their miles (nearly) useless.

guv1976

I'm not sure what DL's policy is on through-checking baggage on separate DL=>DL tickets, or whether DL protects against IROPS in such a situation. But the OP should be able to find that out.

lele100

Thank you for your responses, unfortunately I cannot fly to Nassau to be able to go to Rome. and PDX shows crazy miles also today. Do you think waiting, the miles might go down? I have never seen this before, I have seen them go up maybe 20-50k miles but not this much. Like I said 2 weeks ago the miles needed to go to rome from miami were in normal range for the july time period, When do you think would be a good time to check? I am wanting to go 1 or 2nd week of August 2024. Thanks

I do have a delta platinum amex card,

xliioper

What do mean by normal range? DL award levels to/from US/Canada largely correlate to revenue fare pricing these days at 1.0 - 1.5 CPM range. This has been true for some time. International awards seem to be trending to the lower part of that range (1.0 - 1.1 CPM). Given that DL Main revenue fares start at $1.3K - $1.4K roundtrip for MIA-FCO in the summer, I'd expect Main award levels to be in 120K to 130K miles roundtrip on MIA-FCO best case when there is inventory in lowest award classes. Not sure why FCO awards seem so out of whack right now. There is some availability on MIA-MXP at 105K roundtrip in Main in the summer (revenue fares on MIA-MXP in the summer start at $1150 roundtrip for Main).




FLL-MXP starts at 91.8K miles roundtrip.

lele100

By normal range I mean around 110-120k not 360-420 k for ecomony. I was just wondering if I wait what are the chances of the miles needed to go down from what they are now.

xliioper

You said you were checking for last few weeks. What dates were you searching for specifically? You couldn't have been searching for August dates as booking window hadn't opened for August yet. DL award levels to/from US vary greatly based on seasonality, just like revenue fares (there are basically no longer any fixed levels that apply all year). If you were checking for shoulder/off-season dates, there is basically zero chance you will see award levels that low for the summer high season. You mentioned PDX and there's some seasonally restricted awards on PDX-FCO from 74.8K miles roundtrip in Main. These are seasonally restricted to Fall travel (seasonal restrictions are found in the award fare rules at the "Fare Rules" link prior to check-out). So you can't expect to see levels that low in the summer high season due to the seasonal restrictions on these cheaper awards.

lele100

When I checked miami to rome a few weeks ago it was 110-115 and it was for July 2024, but if I check july now it is way up there

DrMilano

As @xliioperexplained that the reward fares are matching up to the revenue ticket price, I don’t not believe that the reward fares will increase much further by waiting. You can set a Google flight price alert for your desired travel dates and then check the Skymiles reward rate when the revenue fare drops. As mentioned above, the early bird no longer gets the worm, and maybe Delta is factoring this in now for displaying higher award redemption rates when the schedule is initially released.